UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Essays on Development and Political Economy Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/38x1c5hw Author Di Miceli, Andrea Publication Date 2017 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Essays on Development and Political Economics A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Management by Andrea Di Miceli 2017 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Essays on Development and Political Economy by Andrea Di Miceli Doctor of Philosophy in Management University of California, Los Angeles, 2017 Professor Romain T. Wacziarg, Chair My dissertation studies the determinants of conflict and state formation as well as how national identities influence individuals’ decisions. It consists of three chapters. The first, “Chasing the Key Player: A Network Approach to the Myanmar Civil War” studies the determinants of civil conflict in Myanmar. As governments in weak states often face several armed groups, they have to allocate resources to fight a subset of them strategi- cally. I use a simple model to embed heterogeneity among rebel groups stemming from their network of alliances and enmities. The key insight is that, by attacking a group, the Myanmar army weakens its allies. Therefore, the model predicts that the Myanmar army strategically targets armed groups who are central in the network of alliances. To test the model’s predictions, I collect a new data set on rebel groups’ locations, alliances, and enmities for the period 1989-2015. Using geo-referenced information on armed groups attacked by the Myanmar army, the empirical evidence strongly supports the predictions ii of the model. A one standard deviation increase in a group’s centrality increases the like- lihood of conflict with the Myanmar’s army by twenty per cent over the baseline yearly conflict probability, thus identifying a new determinant of conflict. This result is robust to variables measuring the opportunity cost of conflict such as rainfall and commodity price shocks. Since past (and expected) conflicts might affect alliances and enmities be- tween armed groups, I pursue an instrumental variable strategy to provide evidence that the mechanism proposed is indeed causal. The second chapter, “Peaceful and Violent Power Consolidation: Evidence from Myan- mar” analyzes how rebels’ characteristics affect the Myanmar government’s choice of weakening them peacefully or through military conflict from 1988 until 2015. In line with the theoretical predictions of Powell(2013), I find empirical evidence that hetero- geneity in armed groups’ resources and military ability affect the Myanmar government’s consolidation decisions. Namely, groups whose ethnic homeland lacks resources and/or are unable to resist sustained offensives because of their limited military capacity, are more likely to be peacefully absorbed by the Myanmar government. Moreover, peaceful consolidation takes time: only three armed groups out of the forty-seven active in 1988 can be said to be completely disarmed by 2015 while almost twenty of them keep playing a role as militias linked to the Myanmar government. In the third and last chapter, I study the cultural transmission of fertility preferences among second generation immigrant women observed in U.S. Censuses from 1910 to 1970. As hypothesized by (Bisin and Verdier, 2001), the transmission of preferences can be “vertical” or “horizontal”. Using a unique source documenting the variation in fertil- iii ity behavior in Europe before and after the first demographic transition (1830-1970), I unpack the influence of parents (measured by source-country fertility at the time of de- parture from Europe) versus the influence of peers (measured by fertility of the same-age cohorts living in the source country and transmitted by same-age recent immigrants). I find that the transmission mechanism is crucially affected by the number of foreign born immigrant peers living in the same MSA. On one hand, the “vertical” channel of trans- mission is stronger in places where there are few newly arrived foreign born immigrant couples from the same source countries. On the other hand, fertility choices of second generation women are strongly correlated with marital fertility choices measured over peer cohorts in the source countries whenever they live in MSAs densely populated by recently arrived immigrants. iv The dissertation of Andrea Di Miceli is approved. Nico Voigtlaender Adriana Lleras-Muney Paola Giuliano Christian Dippel Romain T. Wacziarg, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2017 v I want to thank all of you who took the time to listen, criticize, play and eat with me during these six short years. I am grateful for what you taught me and for how you made me a better person. Pierluca and Elia stand out from this crowd as they had the remarkable skills to stick around for longer. Questa tesi è dedicata ai miei genitori, mia sorella e mio zio. Voi, attorno a cui son cresciuto, mi avete stimolato, sostenuto ed incoraggiato non senza sacrifici personali. Il più grande dono che mi avete dato è stata la libertà di scegliere cosa fare della mia vita professionale. Essendo conscio dei miei limiti e difetti, mi sento fortu- nato perché so che sulle vostre spalle ho potuto vedere e raggiungere orizzonti altrimenti impossibili. Grazie di cuore per il vostro affetto e, dato che studio economia, per tutti i soldi ed il tempo investiti su di me, non era chiaro che fosse l’investimento migliore. vi Contents 1 Chasing the Key Player: A Network Approach to the Myanmar Civil War1 1.1 Introduction....................................2 1.2 Background: Civil War in Myanmar.......................9 1.3 Theoretical Framework.............................. 18 1.4 Data......................................... 21 1.4.1 Armed Groups and Network Data for 1989-2015........... 21 1.4.2 Rainfall Data................................ 23 1.4.3 Natural Resources and Price Data.................... 24 1.4.4 Generating the Myanmar Grid...................... 24 1.4.5 Conflict Data................................ 25 1.4.6 Parametrization and Model’s Prediction................ 29 1.5 Effect of Intercentrality on Conflict....................... 30 1.5.1 OLS Results................................ 30 1.5.2 Commodities and Conflict in Myanmar................ 36 1.5.3 Rainfall and Conflict in Myanmar.................... 39 vii 1.6 Instrumental Variables Estimation....................... 42 1.6.1 Additional Robustness Checks...................... 52 1.7 Conclusion..................................... 56 Appendices 59 A Appendices 60 A.1 Model Appendix.................................. 60 A.2 Network Data Appendix (Partially Incomplete)................ 62 A.3 Rainfall Data Appendix.............................. 63 A.4 Conflict Data Appendix (Partially Incomplete)................. 64 A.5 Commodities Appendix (Partially Incomplete)................ 65 A.6 Additional Robustness Checks.......................... 67 A.7 Instrumental Variables: Additional Results................... 74 2 Peaceful and Violent Power Consolidation: Evidence from Myanmar 77 2.1 Introduction.................................... 78 2.2 The Model: Powell(2013)............................. 80 2.2.1 Comparative Statics............................ 84 2.2.2 Defining the Rebel Group’s Military Strength............. 85 2.3 Historical Background.............................. 86 2.4 Empirical Evidence................................ 89 2.4.1 Data..................................... 89 2.4.2 OLS Results................................ 92 viii 2.5 Conclusion..................................... 96 3 Horizontal vs. Vertical Transmission of Fertility Preferences 97 3.1 Introduction.................................... 98 3.2 Literature Review................................. 102 3.3 Data Description.................................. 105 3.3.1 Fertility Data for European Countries 1880-1970........... 105 3.3.2 Data on Fertility in the U.S. 1910-1970................. 108 3.4 Empirical Strategy................................. 111 3.4.1 Identification and Challenges to Internal Validity........... 111 3.5 Results....................................... 116 3.5.1 The Horse Race Contest......................... 116 3.5.2 Measurement Error in the Lagged Fertility Rates........... 120 3.5.3 Mechanism Underlying the Horse Race Result............ 123 3.6 Conclusions.................................... 132 Appendices 134 B Appendices 135 B.1 Coale and Watkins(1986) Data......................... 135 B.1.1 Robustness of the Fertility Data..................... 137 B.2 Data on Second Generation Migrants: Additional Details.......... 140 B.3 Robustness Checks................................ 142 ix List of Figures 1.1 Yearly Variation in the Top Two Armed Groups Fought by the Myanmar Army ........................................4 1.2 Main Spoken Languages of Myanmar ..................... 15 1.3 Areas under Control of Armed Groups in 1989 ............... 16 1.4 Network of Armed Groups at the end of 1989 ................ 17 1.5 Conflict Events in Myanmar 1989-2015 .................... 28 1.6 Change in Normalized Intercentrality among five groups (1989-2015) .. 30 A.1 Cells within the Myanmar Grid ........................ 65 A.2 Endogenous Price of Teak vs. Intl. Price of Sawnwood ........... 67 2.1 Yearly Conflict Events between the Myanmar government and Three Armed Groups .................................